Artisans Elite: Meet the Minds Behind the Best Looks on Screens and Stages

The ‘Our Planet’ Team

Matthew Aeberhard, Doug Anderson, Roger Horrocks, Alastair Macewen, Jamie McPherson, Gavin Thurston

Cinematography

The Netflix show earned three of the five Emmy noms for nonfiction program cinematography, but the six nominated DPs are part of a larger team. “Each show, you probably have five or six primary cinematographers, and then maybe six or seven who would get an additional photography credit,” says Horrocks. Over the four-year, 50-country production schedule, the team got up-close with everything from sharks and polar bears to ants and sea urchins. The crew spent most of the 3½-week shoots waiting. For a sequence of dolphins eating sardines, “we spent 25 days in a row, 10 hours a day at sea — and all of the footage came from a bait ball event that lasted seven minutes,” Horrocks says.

Ben Davis

Cinematography

The DP on box office smash “Captain Marvel” and “Dumbo” likes mixing up his projects when possible. “You have a lot of independent filmmakers coming into the world of bigger-budget films and that’s quite interesting because they’re not going to look at it like someone who has done that kind of film several times,” he says. Davis also likes building worlds that immerse audiences. “It’s really the thing that you’re trying to do. You want them to look at it and believe that it’s happening, that it exists, that they’re there with you.”

Caleb Deschanel

Cinematography

Deschanel has a lengthy list of credits, but his collaboration with director Jon Favreau on Disney’s “The Lion King” pushed him into new territory: telling a visual story in a virtual-reality environment. “I hadn’t done anything quite like this before, but once you put the goggles on you feel like you’re there,” he says. “Then it’s about opening up your mind to the possibilities and getting the camera in the right position to tell the story. … Creatively you use all the same techniques but it’s just done in a different way.” 

David Franco

Cinematography

Franco says his goal is to explore visual richness and use all his tools for visual storytelling. “A lot of the time the material doesn’t allow you to do that or it pushes you in another direction, but ‘Game of Thrones’ was one that gave an opportunity to do all of that,” says Franco, who shot half the episodes in the iconic HBO epic’s final season. His process for getting a cinematic look on a TV schedule and budget is simple: “You have to work with a little bit more efficiency, I would say, and a bit more precision because of the schedule.”

Mathias Herndl

Cinematography

The German-born, Emmy-winning shooter’s work on CBS All-Access’ buzzy revamp of “The Twilight Zone” gave Herndl the chance to connect the diverse segments of an anthology series. The lighting comes naturally for Herndl, who’s created the look for series such as “Legends,” “Wayward Pines” and “Motive.” “I’m always looking for the visual hook. It’s one of the things I enjoy the most about shooting high-end television,” he says.

Tim Ives

Cinematography

For Ives, pre-production is crucial for creating the kind of imagery that’s won him kudos on “Stranger Things” and “Fosse/Verdon.” “Especially on ‘Stranger Things,’ when I work with the Duffer brothers we spend a lot of time going over the scripts, working out all the shots … and if we had to change them, there was a specific reason and we understood it more because of our pre-production process,” Ives says. He is also quick to credit collaboration with the visual-effects department for the lauded visuals of the show. “We’re all working toward the same goal.”

Matthew Libatique

Cinematography

Libatique’s work this past year ranged from the dark fantasy of Sony/Marvel’s hit “Venom” to the gloomy realism of HBO’s “Native Son” and his Oscar-nominated work on “A Star Is Born.” But that’s par for the course for Libatique. “Each film is like a snowflake for me,” he says. “I have no intention of repeating myself.” However, Libatique enjoys repeat collaborations, having worked four times with Spike Lee and AFI film school pal Darren Aronofsky (including 2010’s “Black Swan,” his first Oscar nomination) and three times each with Jon Favreau and Joel Schumacher.

Matthew J. LLoyd

Cinematography

Lloyd came up via Marvel’s Netflix series to this summer’s worldwide hit movie “Spider-Man: Far From Home.” Lloyd, who also did additional photography on “Captain Marvel,” says working with VFX on a feature is more involved. “You’re in there from the very beginning with the visual-effects supervisor and the art department, figuring out what sections are being built and how it’s going to tie in with plates and the real world environments.” The Alberta, Canada, native built a career in short-form content, until a job as second unit DP on Oliver Stone’s “Savages” brought him into features.

Adam Newport-Berra

Cinematography

Newport-Berra’s work on HBO’s “Euphoria” solidified his reputation as a DP who pushes the boundaries. The show’s visuals have been described as brilliant, groundbreaking and visionary, but Newport-Berra is mostly interested in using his craft to help tell the story. “I think there’s some consistency in my work and that my approach is on a conceptual level, that I really want to get inside the director’s head and understand what’s important to them,” he says. “From there it’s about working with them to build the visual up because it’s really my style to interpret the director’s voice through what I’m doing.”

Trent Opaloch

Cinematography

The Canadian DP’s career has powered up over the past year thanks to his ongoing collaboration with the Russo brothers. He shot the back-to-back Marvel productions of “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame.” Before that, he teamed with them on “Captain America: Civil War” and “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.” The DP cut his teeth on low-budget indies, and made his name working with Neill Blomkamp on 2009’s “District 9,” which earned him BAFTA and CSC noms. He also shot “Elysium” and “Chappie” for Blomkamp.

Clair Popkin

Cinematography

Popkin’s nine years of amateur rock-climbing experience was not the main reason he landed National Geographic’s stunning feature documentary “Free Solo.” “They had a high-angle team in place, people who were professional climbers and climbing photographers,” says Popkin, one of a trio of DPs whose work on the Oscar-winning project earned an Emmys nom. “But they needed another cinematographer to come in and give it the film look, handle anything that needed to be lit and work with them to make it cohesive and shine as a story, so it wouldn’t just be a climbing film.”

Bradford Young

Cinematography

Young cemented his status as one of the industry’s top DPs when he earned an Oscar nomination for “Arrival,” becoming the first African American to get a nod in the category. That reputation grew this year with his work on “When They See Us,” Ava DuVernay’s Netflix series about five black youths falsely convicted in the 1989 Central Park Jogger case. A native of Kentucky who spent his teen years in Chicago, Young enrolled at Howard University intending to study writing, but wound up making films. He’s demonstrated a willingness to take on lighter fare, currently shooting “Space Jam 2.”

Kym Barrett

Costume Design

Costume design credits on Jordan Peele’s hit “Us,” DC hit “Aquaman” and the upcoming “Charlie’s Angels” make this a banner year for Barrett, who says her years in theater made it all possible. “In the theater, you don’t always have a lot of people around you, helping you with everything,” she says. “You learn how to get things done and build bridges.” Barrett likes to get a feeling for the production and the colors that make up its visual language. “You’re part of a whole so as I’m talking to the director I’m also talking with production design because they’re really integral to what we’re doing.”

Ruth E. Carter

Costume Design

Carter made history this year by becoming the first African American to win a costume design Oscar, for her work on “Black Panther.” She’ll try to top that with work on two projects starring Eddie Murphy and directed by Craig Brewer: the fall-debuting Netflix movie “Dolemite Is my Name” and Paramount’s sequel “Coming 2 America.” “I approach costume design like a historian. Whether for a superhero in a fictional world or a comedy like ‘Coming 2 America,’ researching details and authenticity excites my imagination. That solid foundation supports many quick decisions through the filmmaking process.” 

Michele Clapton

Costume Design

Clapton capped years of designing costumes for the denizens of Westeros with the trumphant final season of “Game of Thrones.” The huge success of “Thrones” posed many unusual challenges for the five-time Emmy winner. “It’s not related to any specific, real time or place, so it’s freeing and a bit scary because you’re creating something from nothing,” she says. “But that’s the fun of being a costume designer when you’re trying to create a look for each group of people and make it seem that they are from a specific place and they belong in the story.”

Julian Day

Costume Design

Having channeled Freddie Mercury’s glam-rock costumes in “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Day then topped himself with Elton John’s even more outrageous stage costumes in “Rocketman.” Day added his own twists to the latter, creating a Queen Elizabeth costume John never wore in real life. “I think contemporary costumes — including the ’70s and ’80s — tend to get overlooked,” he says. “I’ve done my share of period films, and I think it’s far easier to hide behind, say, Victorian ruffles and lace than more recent clothing where everyone has memories and opinions about the look.”

Caroline Duncan

Costume Design

Duncan’s costumes played a key role in the acclaimed re-creation of late 1980s New York City for Ava DuVernay’s Emmy-nominated Netflix series “When They See Us.” A veteran with dozens of credits in film and television — including last fall’s pilot for NBC’s “New Amsterdam” — Duncan next will bring her skills to M. Night Shyamalan’s highly anticipated Apple TV series, “Servant,” which she says had a special attraction for her: “The exciting challenge of working on a psychological thriller like ‘Servant’ was that it was so intimate, and gave me the rare opportunity to control every element of the costumes.”

Lou Eyrich

Costume Design

The iconic looks Eyrich created for “Pose” and “American Horror Story” started by collaborating with writer and exec producer Ryan Murphy. “When we sit down to talk he already has the template of what he wants to do in his head,” says Eyrich, who often turns that into a “dream board” that includes fabrics, colors and photographs that will inspire the costumes. “I struggle with whether to watch many old horror films because you don’t want to have that get in the way of some completely new idea or approach,” says Eyrich. “In the end, you want it to feel original.”

Sandy Powell

Costume Design

It’s important to be judicious with your time when dressing films including “The Favourite,” “Mary Poppins Returns” and Martin Scorsese’s upcoming “The Irishman,” Powell says. “Your imagination has to be going 100% of the time, which is actually really exciting,” she says. The three-time Oscar winner is keen on understanding the fundamentals of the craft. “It’s very important to know how to do the things that you’re asking other people to do for you. You don’t have to be the best costume maker but you need to know how it’s done.”

Maryann Brandon

Editing

Early in her career, Brandon “let fate decide” between her becoming a standup comedian and an editor. “I realized two things about the editing room that convinced me to stay: I felt right at home and you can tell stories in many different ways [even jokes].” Brandon’s skills in the past year graced the global smash “Venom” and she has returned to a galaxy far, far away to cut “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” for J.J. Abrams. “I’ll always be grateful for J.J.’s sense of humor as the effort to make something work on screen can be grueling.”

Adam Gerstel

Editing

Gerstel says it wasn’t easy making the jump from VFX editor to picture editor on such demanding films as Jon Favreau’s digital remake of Disney’s “The Lion King.” “Even a few years ago, it wasn’t seen as a path in the industry, but having the experience in visual effects allows me to take something that is really hard to explain and comp it together myself to see if it will work or not.” A special challenge on “The Lion King” involved cutting the song “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King” together live on set to time each shot exactly to the music.

Elliot Graham

Editing

Having cut blockbuster “Captain Marvel” and bringing his skills next to the highly anticipated “Bond 25,” Graham takes an experimental approach to editing that can lead to unique discoveries as he puts a film together. “I try to do the first cut as quickly as possible so you have more time to experiment later,” he says. “You can ask me to try the craziest idea because sometimes it leads to a fresh slant.” Just don’t ask him to spill secrets. “I could tell you about ‘Bond 25’ but then I’d have to kill you,” he jokes.

Tony Kearns

Editing

Cutting together Netflix’s interactive “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch” was a career high for Kearns. “It was highly complex,” he says. “It took 17 weeks to cut, and I used Adobe Premiere Pro as it allowed me to keep multiple edit sequences open simultaneously, and it integrated well with Adobe [After] Effects.” In addition to creating viral-like buzz as an interactive experience for adults, “Bandersnatch” earned Emmy noms for interactive media within a scripted program. Kearns also kept busy this past year cutting the second series of the acclaimed British comedy series “The End of the F***ing World.”

John Ottman

Editing

After winning an Oscar for “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Ottman says he remains eager to explore new types of projects. “I’m blessed because it’s my generation that grew up on great shows like ‘Star Trek,’ movies which were about acceptance and so many other wonderful ideas, and that were also great examples of how to tell a story, how to develop a character and sustain it over the course of a show.” Ottman breaks down “Bohemian Rhapsody” this way: “There’s a clear quest for the protagonist and a clear villain, which is part of why I connected with it so much.”

Vikash Patel

Editing

Emmy-winner Patel tries to enhance what’s on the page when cutting the Apple TV Plus comedy series “The Morning Show,” starring Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carrell; and Netflix’s acclaimed crime drama “Ozark,” returning soon for its third season. “The beauty about [‘Ozark’] is that we really have fun with the filmmaking by deliberately not using material or not coming around for a reaction to heighten the story,” he says. “The goal is to have the audience lean in, wanting more, and at times, being unconventional is the way to do that.”

Doniella Davy

Makeup & Hair

Davy’s makeup skills have been on display the past year in Barry Jenkins’ “If Beale Street Could Talk,” HBO’s “Euphoria” and A24’s “Under the Silver Lake.” Davy previously collaborated with Jenkins on “Moonlight” and is working on his ambitious Amazon series “The Underground Railroad.” “Designing the makeup on ‘Euphoria’ was an artistically ambitious job that entailed creating hundreds of innovative looks that would simultaneously function to visually captivate the audience, propel the storylines forward and inspire the practice of self-expression through makeup.”

Nadia Stacey

Makeup & Hair

Stacey won a BAFTA this year for her highly stylized, historically inspired makeup work on “The Favourite,” also doing “Teen Spirit” for director Max Minghella and “Tolkien” for Dome Karukoski. She also has thriller “Official Secrets,” starring Keira Knightley and directed by Gavin Hood, out this month. “A good hair and make-up designer is invested, first and foremost, in storytelling,” she says. “Like costume designers, we are responsible for helping those in front of the camera transform into another person — we just happen to use a different medium.”

Janine Rath Thompson

Makeup & Hair

Time-traveling superheroes and 1960s icons made this a big year for Thompson, whose work was seen in “Captain Marvel,” “Avengers: Endgame” and “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.” “Marvel has its own set of rules because it really is based on the comic books but they’re very open to hearing what you think,” says Thompson. “And for ‘Once Upon a Time,’ I was looking at things like photographs from high-school yearbooks because if you took movie hairstyles from that time, you’d end up looking too done.”

Debbie Zoller

Makeup & Hair

Diverse makeup work on FX’s limited series “Fosse/Verdon” earned Zoller Emmy noms in the prosthetic and non-prosthetic makeup categories. “The hardest thing was to create all the aging for everyone and make it look natural,” she says of the series. “And in the prosthetic category, we’re up against [shows with] an alien or a zombie or some other unworldly being. And then there’s ‘Fosse,’ which has a lot of prosthetics, but has to look real. So that was the thing that I was so grateful for, because we were recognized for that work.”

Neil Austin

Live Entertainment

This year, Austin won his second consecutive lighting design Tony Award, adding a statue for his work on the Broadway production of James Graham’s “Ink” to last year’s, for “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.” The constant in working on productions big or small is telling the story. “As a lighting designer, you’re the film equivalent of a camera person, focus-puller, editor and colorist, all rolled into one,” he says. “You’re picking what the audience is looking at, how much of the stage they’re seeing, and what the emotional temperature of that moment is.”

Laura Jellinek

Live Entertainment

Jellinek pulled off an unexpected feat with her Tony-nominated set design for the 2019 Broadway revival of “Oklahoma!”: a stark stadium staging with rifle racks on the wall, onstage pots of chili fed to audience members and ramps for breakout star Ali Stoker’s wheelchair. “Just to get Ali to stage level, they had to retrofit the whole backstage,” says Jellinek. “The show is really about everyone being in a room together, audience and actors included. And I sort of realized that people are excluded from that, just from the nature of the buildings we worked in.”

Jason Sherwood

Live Entertainment

Working for TV was not exactly in Sherwood’s comfort zone when he was approached to do the production design for Fox TV’s live presentation of “Rent.” “I think the benefit of my experience in television being really limited was that I wasn’t beholden to a set of rules and standards,” says Sherwood, who earned an Emmy nomination for his work. “I was learning the complex dance of camera and lighting on the fly, but, at the same, it was sort of freeing, because we could take the audience and direct their eye wherever we wanted to and focus the story that way.”

Tyler Bates

Music

Bates gets a lot of return business from directors he’s worked with before, and that is how he landed jobs on box office hits “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw” and “John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum.” “Our responsibility is to create a healthy, fun, energetic process for the director to easily engage, because making film is a team sport,” he says. That’s on top of TV projects “The Punisher” and “Purge,” co-writing and producing a top-20 hit for Bush, the Cirque du Soleil show “R.U.N.,” and producing a soundtrack for the DC comic book series “Dark Nights: Metal.”

Ramin Djawadi

Music

No television score was talked about more this year than Djawadi’s music for the final season of “Game of Thrones.” His melancholy, nine-minute, piano-driven buildup to Arya Stark’s defeat of the Night King generated 15 million views on YouTube, and the score for Episode 3 is nominated for an Emmy. The entire “Game of Thrones” experience has been a career-defining project for Djawadi, who says, “Being able to write music for such a vast project, developing the score and stylistically setting a tone for a show like this — it’s been quite a journey.”

Siddhartha Khosla

Music

First-time Emmy nominee Khosla says working on NBC’s “This Is Us” is rewarding and personal: He and show creator Dan Fogelman were college roommates. “This show is all about life’s tragedies and life’s joys, so when I’m writing the music I feel like I’m scoring it for my friend as much as I’m scoring what’s happening in the scene. It allows me to dig deeper.” Khosla plays all instruments himself, from acoustic guitar to tabla-like drumming on wooden surfaces and the drone-like tanpura. He also created music this past year for Hulu’s “Runaways” and a hip-hop score for Netflix’s “Beats.”

David Klotz

Music

The five-time Emmy-winning music editor has of late had a series of dream gigs, working on “Game of Thrones,” “Stranger Things” and “American Horror Story.” Music editors ensure the score is properly sync’d, and works dramatically, especially during final mixing. “When I’m at the sound mix, and a cue is not working with the scene, I can suggest something different. Suddenly, the music works, we’ve made the scene better, and that’s such a rewarding feeling,” he says. He’s now on the second season of FX’s “Pose,” and will shortly resume work on Fox’s “9-1-1.”

Rickey Minor

Music

It’s been a busy year for Minor, who was music director of the Kennedy Center Honors, the Grammys, the Oscars, an all-star salute to Aretha Franklin and the 60th anniversary Motown celebration, as well as producing Gladys Knight’s national anthem performance at the Super Bowl. “It was probably one of the most exciting and crazy times ever,” says Minor, whose work on the Oscars and the Franklin show are Emmy nominated. “I’m really good at delegating,” he says. “I’m not the best person to do everything. That’s how any great team does it.”

Hannah Beachler

Production Design

Beachler made history as the first African American to be nominated and win the production design Oscar, for Marvel’s “Black Panther.” She also designed frequent collaborator Melina Matsoukas’ latest project, the pilot for FX’s “Y,” based on the comic-book series, and recently wrapped production on Todd Haynes’ untitled chronicle of a lawyer’s fight against the DuPont chemical company. “It’s set in the ’90s and spans 17 years,” she says. “We built 90-plus sets and then had to discreetly change all the environments as the characters age and change, and we also had to contend with every season.”

Michael Bricker

Production Design

“Russian Doll” production designer Bricker admits storytelling isn’t about making things beautiful. “I’m increasingly interested in how light dictates and shapes mood and character,” he says. “Before anyone speaks, these visual clues give the audience tons of information about character, place and time. I like using the subtleties of design to direct, misdirect and manipulate a viewer.” For “Doll,” Bricker’s color-saturation strategy made Maxine’s (Greta Lee) loft the center of Nadia’s (Natasha Lyonne) world, and the further away she moved from it, the more color, texture and saturation started to fade.

Alex DiGerlando

Production Design

FX’s “Fosse/Verdon” and Netflix’s “Maniac” demonstrate the breadth of DiGerlando’s talents. For “Maniac,” he grounded the show’s dark retro future vision in reality, “not science-fiction mumbo jumbo.” “Fosse/Verdon” required him to re-create the world of choreographer Bob Fosse and his dancer wife, Gwen Verdon. “The creativity came in filling in the blanks, both in the homes and the re-creations of the sets,” says DiGerlando, who earned an Emmy nom for the show. “I had to create a 360-degree version of the Kit Kat Klub [from 1972’s ‘Cabaret’], but when you watch the film, most of the time, you’re looking up at the stage.”

Gemma Jackson

Production Design

Jackson says collaboration was the secret to the success of her contributions to “Aladdin” and “Game of Thrones.” “The fulfillment is the communication and then seeing it through,” she says. “When I went to see ‘Aladdin’ I was overjoyed because I could see we’d all come together and I thought it looked gorgeous.” On her work early on in “Game of Thrones,” she says the long haul of the series required a different mindset. “You’re never really off of work because you’re always thinking about it in the back of your mind. It was a fantastic opportunity to make something that no one had ever seen before.”

Pierre-Olivier Vincent

Production Design

Specializing in creating immersive visual worlds for animated films such as “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World,” Vincent is quick to credit collaborating artists for the results. “When [DP] Roger Deakins came to these films [as a visual consultant], he came to the studio and he was so available to work with us,” says Vincent. Working in animation requires flexibility. “We go from project to project to project. What is best for the movie isn’t necessarily what you would do naturally. You’ll have to work to find it.”

Chris Trujillo

Production Design

Trujillo explored the vintage ’80s aesthetic of Netflix’s “Stranger Things” on a much larger scale in its third season, giving a rundown shopping mall in suburban Atlanta a Reagan-era makeover. Dubbed the Starcourt Mall, it features period-accurate re-creations of Waldenbooks, Radio Shack and the Gap, as well as the fictional Scoops Ahoy ice cream shop. He’s especially proud of the interior movie marquee. “That was a total fabrication that was used to hide a giant department store facade,” says Trujillo, a Florida native who also worked on M. Night Shyamalan’s “Glass.”

Charles Wood

Production Design

A veteran of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Wood says following up “Avengers: Infinity War” with all-time box office champ “Avengers: Endgame” required a lot of stamina. “Shooting ‘Endgame’ and ‘Infinity War’ back-to-back over a period of over 200 days was an extremely challenging and daunting undertaking, and a culmination of 10 years of the MCU,” he says. A former VFX art director who’s worked on films large and small, Wood’s work was further seen this summer in “Men in Black: International,” and will next appear in another Marvel feature, “Black Widow.”

Rob How

Production

Veteran line producer How spent 10 months in Lithuania and Ukraine producing HBO’s Emmy-nominated “Chernobyl,” which chronicles the Soviet nuclear disaster and its aftermath. “‘Chernobyl’ needed us to create, build and dress a post-explosion nuclear power station, and then tell the very human stories surrounding this event and its aftermath,” he says. “It was unique in the combination of crew and equipment sourced from all over Europe, gathered in Vilnius, to collaborate on a 19-week shoot around Lithuania, Kiev [Ukraine] and then Moscow, including the Ignalina nuclear power station.” He recently completed the feature film “Ammonite,” directed by Francis Lee for the BBC and See-Saw Films.

Nina Hartstone & John Warhurst

Sound

This dynamic pair earned Oscar, BAFTA, MPSE and AMPS awards for overseeing the harmonious sound of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” “The thing I love about sound is how big a part it has to play in drawing you into a story,” says Hartstone. Having known each other for nearly 20 years, Warhurst says: “We have very similar sensibilities not only on creative ideas and approach, but she’s also as fanatical as I am about things looking and feeling right, about sync and believability and the overall sound and how to achieve it.”

Ai-Ling Lee

Sound

Lee earned her second Oscar nomination for sound mixing on Damien Chazelle’s “First Man,” an honor shared with her frequent sound-editing partner Mildred Iatrou Morgan. They won the year before for Chazelle’s “La La Land,” with Lee becoming the first Asian woman to be nominated in the category. Lee’s next project is “JoJo Rabbit,” out in October. “Things were played from a child’s POV, so sounds for JoJo’s imaginary friend Hitler were eccentric and magical at times and the incoming war was big but never too dangerous or overwhelming,” she says.

Mike Prestwood Smith

Sound

A vet of more than 100 films, Prestwood Smith’s work was heard in “Rocketman,” “Aladdin,” “Dumbo” and “Mary Poppins Returns.” “To understand a director’s aesthetic and to be given the chance to run with that understanding and to be a part of crystalizing it into a feature film is a gift of a job,” he says. “To collaborate with creative people and tell stories is endlessly fascinating and life-affirming. Working on ‘Rocketman’ absolutely personified these feelings for me and it will always be a career highlight.”

Dan DeLeeuw

VFX

The VFX supervisor on “Avengers: Endgame” says he uses visual effects to enhance the script. “You’re always looking for the chance to explore new technologies, explore new storytelling, and then bring that to the screen in an interesting way that will really affect the audience,” he says. DeLeeuw enjoys seeing his movies with true fans in the audience because it’s gratifying to hear their reactions. “All crafts, if you’re putting your heart into it and your soul into it, it becomes art. You’re putting a part of yourself into your work and that becomes your art.”

Max Dennison

VFX

The industry vet is nominated for an Emmy for visual effects in a supporting role for the premiere episode of HBO’s “Chernobyl.” “Our intention concerning the VFX was to always be truthful to the events as they occurred, to always support the drama, and never to get in the way of, or overshadow, the storytelling,” he says. Based at Double Negative in London, Dennison also has in the past year worked on the fantasy side of things, as VFX supervisor for the Syfy series “Krypton,” based on the mythos of DC Comics’ Superman.

Rob Legato

VFX

For Disney’s reboot of “The Lion King,” Legato built a virtual production environment enabling director Jon Favreau to don VR goggles and have cinematographer Caleb Deschanel operate the camera in real time on a real dolly, crane or Steadicam. “It starts to feel real because every choice is made in the same analog way that we’ve made movies for 100 years,” he says. “Because I came from live action, I forced live action into this world. Now, someone who has no experience doing a visual effect can step in and apply their creative juices.”

J.D. Schwalm

VFX

The Oscar winner for “First Man” used technology to create practical effects on set, building a motion platform for the spacecraft and developing software to give the VFX department real-time data about its movements. On “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw,” director David Leitch “gave us the opportunity to show an entirely new audience what the franchise can do with massive-scale in-camera and practical special effects and stunts.” Above all, Schwalm’s goal is to “try and just deliver the best product possible and keep it extremely professional. First and foremost, I want to keep [everyone] safe.”

UP NEXT: Megan Coates

Costume Designer

The Louisiana native’s relationship with Tate Taylor is paying off, having earned her first feature costume designer credit on “Ma,” and again on his upcoming thriller “Eve.” She also costume designed Michael Showalter’s “The Lovebirds,” starring Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani, out next April. “In the camera test with Kumail standing next to Issa, it felt a bit too professorial instead of cool. We sent a buyer on the road to scour stores, ordered a variety [of items] online and found just the right one.”

UP NEXT: Maxwell Orgell

Production Designer

Graduating from shorts to teaming with director Michel Gondry for Showtime’s “Kidding,” Orgell used practical techniques they had used on videos and commercials. Giant photographic prints were used to create surreal transitions and, in one instance, build an entire set emulating a house. “It was for a flashback sequence, to give a certain notion of how memory works,” says Orgell. “It was just a little bit wrong, so it reflected how we remember things in a different way than we experience them.”

UP NEXT: Sarah Evelyn

Costume Designer

Evelyn revved up her career from TV series to “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw,” blending fashion-forward influences from Errolson Hugh’s bespoke designs with luxury brands like Maison Margiela and using them to punctuate Dwayne Johnson’s classic Americana look and Jason Statham’s Savile Row vibe. “Being a filmmaker is so meaningful and exciting but the real magic happens when working with people that care as much as I do about how the visual strengthens a narrative,” she says.

UP NEXT: Marci Rodgers

Costume Designer

Working with Spike Lee has worked well for Rodgers, who went from costume production assistant on 2015’s “Chi-Raq” to costume designer on the series “She’s Gotta Have It” and the Oscar-winning “BlacKkKlansman.” She’s also worked on Liz Garbus’ “Lost Girls,” Steven Soderbergh’s drama “High Flying Birds” and the upcoming “Wu-Tang: An American Saga.” “I did a lot of research and also got to work with a lot of the designers and fashion icons from that era, including Dapper Dan and Walker Wear.”

UP NEXT: Robert Arnold

Director of Photography

The Chicago native graduated in 2011 from AFI and was immediately hired to operate on “The Walking Dead,” paving the way for camera and Steadicam work on “Empire” and “Furious 7.” As DP, he’s shot interstitials for “The New Negroes With Baron Vaughn & Open Mike Eagle” for Comedy Central, and more than 30 sketches for Netflix series “Astronomy Club.” “The biggest challenge was maintaining the integrity of my lighting as I was shooting a new sketch every three to six hours, so it was very intense,” he says.

UP NEXT: Deirdra Govan

Costume Designer

The New York-based Govan’s work appeared in increasingly high-profile projects such as “The Sun Is Also a Star” and “Sorry to Bother You.” Upcoming work includes a TV reboot of “The First Wives Club” for BET, and “The L Word: Generation Q.” “Instead of solely focusing on looking back and trying to re-create what was, my approach to the design process asks how I can positively disrupt and push the language of clothing in contemporary costume design forward,” she says of working on the reboots.

UP NEXT: Monica Salazar

Editor

Salazar’s stepped up from shorts to editing Alma Har’el’s acclaimed feature “Honey Boy,” in which Shia LeBeouf commits an act of celluloid therapy by playing his own father in a story based on the actor’s own childhood. Salazar looks for those moments when putting a scene together in which everything changes. “It’s like you’ve discovered something you didn’t know existed, or time slows down and it’s what one of my professors called a ‘lean forward moment,’” she says. “I love it when that happens.”

UP NEXT: Queensylvia Akuchie

Costume Designer

The former CIA intern came up on dozens of projects including “The Hate U Give” and web series “Black Girls Guide to Fertility.” She’s next working with Oscar-winner Ruth Carter on “Coming 2 America,” on which she’s looking forward to showing off her upbringing and Nigerian culture. “It’s about being able to help actors during their journey and finding the colors, textures, palettes and applications that will allow them to see their character,” she says.

Andy Jurgensen

Editor

Jurgensen earned his stripes on his way to editing “Anima,” the mind-bending collaboration between Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and director Paul Thomas Anderson. He was first assistant editor on projects including Anderson’s “Inherent Vice” and associate editor on “Phantom Thread.” “Paul had a solid vision from the start, which always helps,” he says of “Anima.” “From there, we used the choreography to find the emotional footing without trying to overwork it while embracing some of the mistakes along the way.”

UP NEXT: Sandra Valde-Hansen

Director of Photography

Valde-Hansen will follow up shooting Starz’s outrageous, surreal, just-canceled comedy “Now Apocalypse,” which teamed her up with frequent collaborator, director Gregg Araki, with Showtime’s reboot “The L Word: Generation Q,” set to premiere this fall. “When creating visuals for ‘Generation Q,’ the first thing we explore is, ‘Whose perspective is this scene from? What are they going through?’ The emotional arc of the scene through that character perspective helps us define lighting and framing.”

UP NEXT: Michael Burgess

Cinematographer

With credits on “The Curse of La Llorona” and “Annabelle Comes Home,” the camera operator-turned-cinematographer is quietly making a name for himself. Now filming “The Conjuring 3,” he’s making bold decisions with director Michael Chaves thanks to the shorthand they’ve built up from previous work. “He’s good at pushing me and is confident in my choices and I’m confident in his opinion about my choices whether they are right or wrong.”

UP NEXT: Yong Ok Lee

Production Designer

Poised for a big jump following her work on Lulu Wang’s “The Farewell,” Lee came to film from the fashion industry. She had a clear focus for the film: “I wanted the sets to reflect real Chinese life and people while keeping interesting visual points. It was a delicate balancing act between realism and hyper-realistic emphasis. Of course it wasn’t easy due to lack of resources, time and budget (as always). And most of the sets were location-based so it was hard to have everything under perfect control.”

UP NEXT: Joe ‘Jody ‘Williams

Director of Photography

Williams started as a loader right out of film school and has now converted his camera operator gig on season 4 of “Empire” into being DP for season 5. He’s now working with director Craig Brewer on “Coming 2 America,” starring Eddie Murphy, for Paramount. “We’ll be shooting mainly in Atlanta, with some plates work in Kenya, and we’re filming wide-screen, which will also help with our VFX,” he says. “Panavision made a set of Artiste lenses especially for us, as they work so well with the wide format.”